Google Reader is to be laid to rest on July 1st of this year. Moment of silence…
Ok, now that that is out of the way, let’s move on to some alternatives that can give us our news feed fix as we move forward in a world sans Google Reader. If you have been a faithful Google Reader user your mind may now be spinning with thoughts of where to go next, but have no fear Android Headlines is here, and we shall show you the way.
We’ve already ran through some alternatives on the Desktop side of things but, what about Android? How can you get your news fix on Android? Read on and we’ll fill you in!
Flipboard has become one of the most popular Android news sources over the past year since its inception on May 5th, 2012 when it first was announced to be available for the Galaxy S III. Shortly thereafter, a beta version was released on the Flipboard site. The mainstream version of Flipboard was released on June 22, 2012 on Google Play.
Flipboard was designed to be an intuitive way to flip through your news feed, hence the name Flipboard. Flipboard will also integrate most if not all of your mainstream social feeds into your news stream for an all-in-one feed, giving you all of the information that you could possibly need about, and from, around the world in one sitting. Flipboard uses a magazine styling to present you with photos from your choice of streams with headlines as an over-lay. Tapping a particular feed lets you browse the stories inside in a very intuitive and well presented manner. It is pretty good looking too.
Feedly
Feedly is immensely popular and that could be based on a very important feature that will soon be all but useless, it syncs with Google Reader. There are some other features of the app that we can still use, like using Feedly to read the news.
One of the most important things about Feedly is that it is available on most any platform and runs from the same code on all mobile devices, which means that the updates across platform will be simultaneous, at least in theory.
Feedly allows the user to choose from featured sites, the user’s own choice of feed, or even will allow the user to choose a topic and receive all of the feeds in that topic. Feedly utilizes a minimalistic, magazine like experience to present the user with a summary of each article. The user can then choose to read the entire article inside the Feedly app. Feedly will also adapt to the specific user, determining what you are most likely to want to read based on prior selections.
Feedly is one of the top choices out there as an RSS reader, and coming from Google Reader you should definitely give it a try.
Pulse
Another very intuitive news reader is Pulse. Pulse was released by Alphonso Labs in 2010 and uses a tile-based interface to present the user news from his favorite feeds. News feeds are arranged in a vertical format where the user can swipe up and down to get the latest feed from different sources or swipe right or left to go to the next feed from a particular source. Topics are organized in list form inside the menu tab, you can also add new sources to your feed from there.
Pulse also allows you to add your facebook feed to your news feed, but it is up to you to organize your Pulse home screen as it suits you. However, it is very easy to get the hang of Pulse, and many users enjoy and tout its ease of use as the reason that they prefer Pulse as their news reader solution.
Pulse doesn’t take much thought to set up and gives you a quick and easy way to read news from your favorite site. If that is what floats your boat, give this one a looksy.
Taptu
Taptu reminds us of a much more customizable Pulse. As a user, you can start with one of Taptu’s pre-built solutions for your news feed our strike out on your own to tailor the app exactly to your specifications. Taptu allows you to add your favourite streams via the Add Streams button, there you can add almost any publication’s stream that you can think of. The app also allows you to search for streams by category or by keyword. Like a few of our previous news feed solutions, Taptu also allows for adding Twitter and facebook feeds into the mix.
Get Taptu if you strive for perfecting your feed and need to have it your way.
Google Currents
You may know Google Currents as that app in your drawer that you can’t get rid of, but you may find it much more useful with the fall of Google Reader. Google Currents was released by Google in December of 2011 as a magazine viewer/RSS reader, but has not seen widespread adoption. The application is still very useful for what it is designed to do.
With Google Currents, you will see a magazine styling much like flipboard, but that is where the similarities end. Google Currents is certainly not as intuitive as our previous mentions, but you will be presented with a very nice inteface and the app is fairly easy to get along with. With Currents, you will be able to download app-optimised editions of magazine and newspaper publications as well as subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds as you did with Google Reader.
If you prefer a Google solution to your upcoming dilemma, try out Google Currents.
There you have it folks. Our top solutions to the end of the Google Reader era. You should find here an app that will satiate your need to read the news-worthy. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments so that others can give them a go as well.